ICANN Board Rejects .XXX Domain Application – By a 9-5 vote with one abstention, the ICANN Board has rejected the .xxx domain application from ICM Registry. The decision came nearly seven years after the proposal was first made. ICM Registry is reportedly considering court action.

We did it again… for the third consecutive year Webnames.ca exhibited at the Massive Technology Show. This year the business-to-business technology tradeshow and networking event was held at the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre (Canada Place) on March 28th.

DomainNameWire recently surveyed the Better Business Bureau records of the seven largest domain Registrars in North America and were surprised to see that complaints ranged from 2 on the low end (over the last 3 years) to 321 on the high end.

As an ICANN Accredited Registrar, Webnames.ca follows the domain name industry very closely and the recent RegisterFly saga has been on our radar this month. The Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will revoke RegisterFly’s accreditation by the end of this month and plans to review how it accredits and disciplines domain name registrars after this fiasco put tens of thousands of websites at risk. ICANN president Paul Twomey has called for decisive action to reform its standard Registrar Accreditation Agreement to help protect domain customers.

Simple websites between one and a dozen pages, commonly referred to as “brochure” websites, are widely used by small businesses and organizations to accomplish two things on the Internet: get found on search engines and provide information about products/services to potential customers 24/7. The term “brochure website” is actually something of a misnomer. One of the worst mistakes a small business can make is duplicating their marketing material online.

Information Week reported yesterday that Microsoft is stepping up efforts against those who illegally profit from their trademarks by registering domains with slightly altered spellings. Paul Mc Dougall writes that the software maker will more aggressively pursue legal action against companies that register domain names that are misspellings of Microsoft product names in order to capture Internet traffic from typo-prone computer users.

Today on DomainNameWire.com, Andrew Allenmann stresses the importance of a good domain name and points to a $1 Million lesson.

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal confirms that the domain name Topix.com was purchased for $1M in January. The new owner is Topix.net, which receives 10M visitors per month. The company understood the user confusion of not owning the .com version of the domain and negotiated the purchase.

Webnames.ca will be exhibiting at the Massive Technology Show again this year and our resident dot.Mobi expert, Cybele Negris, has been chosen to speak at the conference. Cybele will be talking about the growing mobile market and how a mobile optimized web presence is becoming increasingly important to businesses large and small. Other speakers include Leonard Brody of NowPublic, John Topping of Google, and Kerry Munroe of Yahoo! Canada.

Update On Registerfly – During the past week, ICANN has posted in its blog several updates on theRegisterFlysituation, and many unhappy customers have posted followup comments. On March 8, a U.S. District Court judge handed control of RegisterFly back to Kevin Medina, the original CEO, resolving a dispute over ownership of the company. ICANN has indicated that this resolution “does not alter RegisterFly obligations to immediately cure the breaches of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement, as noticed by ICANN.” On Feb. 21, ICANN had sent a letter to RegisterFly giving 15 working days’ notice of several breaches of contract. ICANN could give notice of termination of the registrar’s accreditation as of Wednesday, March 14.

Canadian Privacy Commissioner Issues Finding On Registrant ID Requirements – In his blog, Michael Geist has pointed out a finding by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada in which the Assistant Commissioner comments that it is appropriate for a domain registrar to require personal identification in order to change the administrative email address for a domain registration.

Today, Verisign released it’s Domain Name Industry Brief (PDF) reporting strong growth across the domain name industry in 2006. The Domain Name Industry Brief series highlights key trends in the industry, key performance indicators and growth opportunities.

ICANN Puts Registrar On Notice – ICANN has posted a Feb. 21 letter to registrar Registerfly.com giving formal notice of several breaches in Registerfly’s accredition agreement with ICANN. The letter provides information on the breaches, and additional comments have been posted to the ICANN Ombudsman’s blog. ICANN may give notice of termination of the registrar’s accreditation if the breaches are not cured within 15 working days.

If you’re keen on the Internet and want to get up-to-speed on what tools and sites are worthwhile for small business people, be sure to check out the March issue of PROFIT Magazine. In a 13 page section titled The Fabulous NEW Internet [Web 2.0], Editor Ian Portsmouth rallies his tech writers to handpick 21 Essential Web Tools. The majority of the tools and sites they recommend are on our radar as well, so we’ll be profiling them in more detail in the coming months. Here are a couple of my favorites snippets:

Back in October, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) celebrated it’s 750,000th .CA registration marking a 50% rise in the number of .CA registrations in under two years.

“The phenomenal growth of dot-ca registrations is the result of increased awareness of the value of dot-ca and the trust Canadians place in it,” says Bernard Turcotte, President and CEO of the Ottawa-based Canadian Internet Registration Authority. “Dot-ca still offers the best opportunity to get the domain name you want when compared with the larger dot-com registry.” “Dot-ca is reserved for Canadians and defines an organization or individual who meets Canadian presence requirements,” explains Mr. Turcotte.